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The Romanian Navy was founded in 1860 as a river flotilla on the Danube. After the unification of Wallachia and Moldavia, Alexandru Ioan Cuza, the ruling Domnitor of the Romanian Principalities, decided on 22 October 1860 by order no. 173 to unify the navies into a single flotilla. The navy was French-trained and organized.[3] Officers were initially sent to Brest Naval Training Centre in France, as the Military School in Bucharest did not have a naval section.[1] The first Commander-in-chief of the navy was Colonel Nicolae Steriade. The base was first established in 1861 at Izmail, but it was later relocated in 1864 at Brăila and in 1867 at Galați. The equipment was modest at best, with 3 ships from Wallachia and 3 from Moldavia, manned by 275 sailors.[1] The main goal of the navy was to organize, train and expand this small force.

The first seamen's training school was established in 1872 at Galați for officers, petty officers and sailors. The first acquisition of the Romanian Navy was the steamboat "Prințul Nicolae Conache Vogoride". The ship was purchased in 1861 and was later transformed into a warship at Meyer naval shipyard in Linz, being christened "România" when it was launched at Galați harbor.[1] In 1867, the royal yacht "Ștefan cel Mare" (Stephen the Great) entered service. In October 1873, the Fulgerul gunboat, ordered by the Romanian state as the first purpose-built warship in the history of the Romanian Navy, was finished at the Toulon shipyard in France. However, the ship was unarmed, so she would be allowed passage through the Turkish straits. After arriving in Romania in April 1874, she was fitted with a Krupp cannon in a mild steel turret at the Galați shipyard.[4] The next ship to enter service with the Romanian Navy was the spar torpedo boat "Rândunica" (The Swallow) in 1875. These ships represented the Romanian Flotilla during the War of Independence.

"Fulgerul" (The Lighting) gunboat, built in 1873 at Toulon and armed in the following year at Galați, was the first military ship to have sailed under Romanian flag in maritime waters.

During the War of Independence, the name used in Romanian historiography to refer to the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish war, the Romanian Navy sailed under the Russian flag.[3] The main task of the Romanian Flotilla Corps was to transport Russian troops, equipment and supplies across the Danube and to protect the bridges across the river by using mine barrages in key points. The main success of the war was the sinking of the Turkish river monitor "Seyfî" near Măcin by a group of spar torpedo boats including "Rândunica" and the Russian Carevitch and Ksenya crafts.[1] Another notable success was the sinking of the Turkish river monitor "Podgoriçe" (Podgorica) by the Romanian coastal artillery on 7 November 1877.[1]

After the war, the navy transported the Romanian troops back across the Danube. The small, but successful navy had demonstrated the need for a strong Danube flotilla in order to secure the southern border of Romania. Three rearmament plans were implemented: during 1883-1885, 1886-1888 and 1906-1908.[1] These plans mainly concentrated on the Danube flotilla. In 1898, the "Flotilla Corps", as it was known until then, was organized in two sections: the Danube fleet and the Black Sea fleet.[5] The riverine base was at Galați, while the maritime base was at Constanța, which was now part of Romania.

Potemkin at anchor with the Romanian flag hoisted on her mast, Constanța, July 1905

On 2 July 1905, during the mutiny of the Russian battleship Potemkin, the Romanian protected cruiser Elisabeta engaged the Russian torpedo boat Ismail as the latter was trying to sneak into the Romanian port of Constanța. Elisabeta fired two warning shots, first a blank charge then an explosive charge, forcing the torpedo boat to retreat. Later that day, Potemkin and Ismail left Romanian waters.[6] During the night of 7 July, however, Potemkin returned to the Romanian port, this time accepting to surrender to the Romanian authorities in exchange for the latter giving asylum to the crew. On the noon of 8 July, Captain Negru, the commander of the port, came aboard the Potemkin and hoisted the Romanian flag before allowing the warship to enter the inner harbor.[7] On 10 July, after negotiations with the Romanian Government, Potemkin was handed over to Imperial Russian authorities and taken to Sevastopol.[8][9]

The protected cruiser Elisabeta (Elizabeth), built in 1888 by Armstrong.

After the War of Independence, two naval rearmament programs were proposed for the Black Sea flotilla. The 1899 program called for six coastal battleships, four destroyers and twelve torpedo boats.[5] Apart from four torpedo boats,[10][11] none of these ships were ever built.[12] The 1912 naval program envisioned six 3,500-ton light cruisers, twelve 1,500-ton destroyers and a submarine.[5][12] Four destroyers (and allegedly a submarine[3][5]) were actually ordered from Italy, but they were not delivered as the Italian Navy requisitioned them in 1914.[3][5][12] The largest Romanian Black Sea ship was the old cruiser Elisabeta, laid down in 1888.[13] The protected cruiser had guarded the mouths of the river Danube during the Second Balkan War, but she was disarmed when World War I began. Her armament was emplaced on the bank of the Danube River to protect against possible attacks by Austro-Hungarian river monitors, and she remained in Sulina for the duration of the war.[5] The Romanian Black Sea squadron also had four old gunboats from the 1880s, which were of limited value, and three old Năluca-class torpedo boats, built in France.[12] The Romanian Navy had to rely on the armed merchant ships of the state merchant marine, known as SMR (Serviciul Maritim Român).[3][5] The steam liners Regele Carol I, România, Împăratul Traian and Dacia were converted into auxiliary cruisers.[12][14]

The Danube Flotilla was more modern,[5][15] and consisted of four river monitors (Lascăr Catargiu, Mihail Kogălniceanu, Ion C. Brătianu and Alexandru Lahovari) and eight British-built torpedo boats.[3] The four river monitors were built in 1907 at Galați. They were armed with three 12-cm cannons each. In 1918, Mihail Kogălniceanu was converted to a sea-going monitor. The British torpedo boats from the Căpitan Nicolae Lascăr Bogdan class were built during 1906-1907 and weighed 50 tons each. There were also approximately six older gunboats used for border patrol, minelayers and other auxiliary ships used for transport or supply.[15] The Romanian Navy had a secondary role during World War I and only had light losses.[3] The river monitors participated in the defense of Turtucaia and later secured the flank of the Romanian and Russian defenders in Dobruja.[16] The main success of the war was the mining of an Austro-Hungarian river monitor.[3]

Following the end of World War I, the Kingdom of Romania took possession over three Austro-Hungarian river monitors[5] (renamed after the newly incorporated territories of Ardeal, Basarabia and Bucovina) and purchased in 1921 four Italian patrol boats. These ships, together with the ones already in service, made Romania's Danube flotilla the most powerful riverine fleet in the world until World War II.[3]

The main focus of the Romanian Navy during the interwar period was the Black Sea fleet. In 1920, two of the initial four Aquila-classscout cruisers ordered from Italy were received.[5] These were renamed Mărășești and Mărăști.[17] Four gunboats were purchased from the French Navy: Stihi, Dumitrescu, Lepri and Ghiculescu.[3][18] Another gunboat of the same class was bought for spares.[17] Seven torpedo boats were received as war reparations from Austro-Hungaria.[5] The torpedo boat Fulgerul however was lost during the trip to Romania when she capsized and sank in the Bosphorus in 1922.[17]Năluca, Sborul and Smeul, three of these old torpedo boats, will later see service in World War II. In 1926, two additional destroyers were ordered from Italy: Regele Ferdinand and Regina Maria of the Regele Ferdinand class destroyer, together with the Romanian Navy's first submarine, Delfinul, and the submarine tenderConstanța.[18] These ships were commissioned between 1930 and 1936.[3]

In 1936, a new rearmament program was proposed. The new plan envisioned a cruiser, four destroyers, three submarines, four minelayers and twelve motor torpedo boats.[3] A number of these warships would have been built under license in Romania at Galați, where a new dry dock was developed. However, the navy had a low priority within the Romanian Army.[19] As a result, only the Romanian-built minelayingdestroyer escortAmiral Murgescu and three British-built motor torpedo boats (received in February 1940 and designated: Viforul, Vijelia and Viscolul) were received before the Second World War.[19][20] Another nine British motor torpedo boats were to be built under license at Galați, but this plan was canceled after Romania joined the Axis. The river monitors from the Danube squadron were modernized between 1937 and 1943 at Galați.[19]

The expansion of the Romanian Navy during the interwar period required more training facilities and ships. The first step towards this issue was taken in 1920, when a naval college was founded at Constanța. In 1938, the sail ship Mircea was built in Hamburg by the Blohm & Voss shipyard as a training vessel for the Romanian Navy. The SMR (Serviciul Maritim Român, the Romanian state merchant marine) was also endowed with a number of new ships: the steamer Oituz, the ex-German freighters Ardeal, Peleș, Alba Iulia and Suceava (all of them commissioned between 1932-1933), the passenger liners Basarabia and Transilvania (bought from Germany in 1938) and four new freighters from Italy just before the start of the Second World War: Balcic, Cavarna, Mangalia and Sulina.[19] In 1940, the SMR had 17 merchant ships with a total of over 72,000 tons of shipping.[19]

NMS Delfinul, the only Axis submarine in the Black Sea in 1941, acted mainly as a "ship-in-being" due to its obsolescence and sank only one unescorted merchant ship.

In 1941, The Royal Romanian Navy had two scout cruisers (MărășeștiMărăști), two destroyers (Regele Ferdinand and Regina Maria), three gunboats, one submarine (Delfinul), three motor torpedo boats, one minelayer (also employed as destroyer escort), three auxiliary minelayers, fifteen small auxiliary vessels and twenty seaplanes.[21] The Aquila-class cruisers were obsolete warships that had seen service with the Italian Navy during World War I as Sparviero and Nibbio. The scout cruiser Mărăști (ex-Sparviero) had a cracked shaft and could not exceed the speed of 24 knots. As a result, Mărăști never ventured far from the coast. Delfinul, the only Axis submarine present in the Black Sea in 1941, was obsolete and mechanically unreliable.[22] In comparison, the Soviet Black Sea Fleet had a battleship, three medium cruisers, three light cruisers, three flotilla leaders, eight modern destroyers, five old destroyers, two large torpedo boats, 47 submarines and many other auxiliary and small vessels.[19] The overwhelming superiority of the Soviet Navy forced the Royal Romanian Navy to conduct mainly defensive operations throughout the entire war and its warships rarely hazarded further east than Cape Sarych.[23]

The two Regele Ferdinand class destroyers were the most powerful surface units available to the Axis powers during the naval war in the Black Sea but were mostly used for convoy escort. The Romanian-built minelayer Amiral Murgescu and the three auxiliary minelayers of the Romanian Navy played an important role in the defence of Constanța in 1941 and later in securing the merchant convoy routes to the Bosporus and the supply routes to Odessa and Sevastopol. Mines were the main cause of Soviet submarine losses in the Black Sea naval war. During World War II, the Royal Romanian Navy received two submarines, four minesweepers and four cutters, all built at the Galați shipyard in Eastern Romania. The two submarines, Rechinul and Marsuinul, were received however too late in the war to see significant action, as after 1941 there were very few available targets.[24]

The Royal Romanian Navy was involved in the evacuation of Axis forces from Crimea in 1944. The Romanian naval commander, Rear Admiral Horia Macellariu, was awarded the German Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross after Operation 60,000, the contingency plan for the evacuation of Crimea.[24] Until King Michael's Coup, the Romanian Navy retreated behind the protection of the coastal mine barrages and anti-aircraft defences of Constanța as the Soviet Air Force began to launch heavy air attacks. On the capitulation of Romania in August 1944, the German warships were ordered to leave Romanian harbours. However, when the Soviet minesweeper T-410 Vzryv, accompanied by the Romanian minelayer Amiral Murgescu, was sunk by a German submarine, the Soviet Navy accused the Royal Romanian Navy of betrayal and seized all vessels using this excuse on 5 September 1944.[25] By this late stage of the war, only one destroyers (Regina Maria), one scout cruiser (Mărășești), two gunboats (Dumitrescu and Ghiculescu), one minelayer (Amiral Murgescu) and three motor torpedo boats were still operational. The rest of the warships were in repairs after the evacuation of Crimea and the Soviet air attacks of the last couple of months or had been relegated to training duties. The Soviet Navy moved all Romanian warships to Caucasian ports. They were not return until after the war. The older vessels were received in September 1945, while the more modern ones (such as the Regele Ferdinand class) were kept by the Soviet Black Sea Fleet until the early 1950s.[26] A number of warships were never returned.

The largest Romanian warship loss of the entire war was the accidental sinking of the gunboat Lepri. The gunboat ran into a Romanian mine laid by the auxiliary minelayer Aurora near Sulina in January 1941, when hostilities between the Soviet Union and the Axis had not begun. While the Royal Romanian Navy had light losses throughout the war, the state merchant navy was practically non-existent by late 1944: every ship of the SMR was sunk or damaged by the Soviet Navy and Air Force because of the light Romanian and German forces in the Black Sea that were unable to provide adequate protection.[27]

Built at the Galați shipyard in Romania between 1938 and 1941; initially intended only as a minelayer, but eventually she was also armed and employed as a destroyer escort; by March 1944 she was converted to an anti-aircraft cruiser, armed with 2 x 102 mm, 6 x 37 mm, 4 x 20 mm, 4 x 13 mm

The Soviet Leninets-class submarine was sunk with depth charges between Constanța and Sevastopol by the Romanian gunboat Ghiculescu supported by the German submarine chaser UJ-104 on 18 or 21 April 1944[73][74][75]

The Romanian Naval Forces ordered three IAR 330 Puma Naval helicopters, with the last one being commissioned in December 2008. The helicopters are in a similar configuration to those of the Romanian Air Force, including the SOCAT upgrade package; the Navy Pumas also have flotation gear fitted under the nose and main undercarriage fairings. They are currently operated from Navy frigates for search and rescue, medevac and maritime surveillance missions.

Soldiers from the 307th Marine Battalion disembark from a Dutch landing ship at Vadu beach during a military exercise.

The 307th Marine Battalion ('Batalionul 307 Infanterie Marină') is the coastal defence unit of the Romanian Navy.[76] The unit was formed in the mid 1970s for the defence of the Danube Delta and Romanian Black Sea shore. It was initially located at 2 Mai village near Mangalia, but since 1975 the Marine Battalion was moved to Babadag, Tulcea County. "The 307 Marine Battalion is destined to carry out military operations in an amphibious river and lagoon environment, the security of objectives in the coastal area, the Danube Delta and the support of local authorities in case of a civil emergency."[77] Its base is near the largest military training range in Romania.

Include the SOCAT upgrade package; the Navy Pumas also have flotation gear fitted under the nose and main undercarriage fairings. Currently operated from Navy frigates for search and rescue, medevac, maritime surveillance missions and ASW.[79][80]

^Șperlea, Florin (2009). From the royal armed forces to the popular armed forces: Sovietization of the Romanian military (1948-1955). East European monographs. Boulder : New York: East European Monographs ; distributed by Columbia University Press. ISBN9780880336628.